ArticleBiostatistics (Oxford, England)2016
Causal mediation analysis for longitudinal data with exogenous exposure.
Article in Biostatistics (Oxford, England), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 61 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
61 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 103 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exposure to air pollution as a potential contributor to cognitive function, cognitive decline, brain imaging, and dementia: A systematic review of epidemiologic research.Neurotoxicology · 2016Pooled it
- Effects of antidepressant medications on brain tissue microstructure in persistent depressive disorder across two randomized controlled trials.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2026Trial
- Trial
- Fine Particulate Air Pollution and the Expression of microRNAs and Circulating Cytokines Relevant to Inflammation, Coagulation, and Vasoconstriction.Environmental health perspectives · 2018Trial
- Applying causal mediation methods to clinical trial data: What can we learn about why our interventions (don't) work?European journal of pain (London, England) · 2017Trial
- B vitamins attenuate the epigenetic effects of ambient fine particles in a pilot human intervention trial.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Trial
- Observational
- Decomposition of longitudinal disparities: an application to the fetal growth-singletons study.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- A Bayesian semi-parametric approach to causal mediation for longitudinal mediators and time-to-event outcomes with application to a cardiovascular disease cohort study.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Examining the interconnections among income, food prices, food insecurity, and health expenditure: a multicausality approach.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Article
- Longitudinal analysis of the ABCD® study.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Review
- Causal Inference in Presence of Intra-Patient Correlation due to Repeated Measurements of Exposure and Outcome in Longitudinal Settings.Statistics in medicine · 2025Article
- Time-varying mediation analysis for incomplete data with application to DNA methylation study for PTSD.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Causal Mediation Analysis for Integrating Exposure, Genomic, and Phenotype Data.Annual review of statistics and its application · 2025Article
- Practical challenges in mediation analysis: a guide for applied researchers.Health services & outcomes research methodology · 2025Article
- Longitudinal mediation analysis with multilevel and latent growth models: a separable effects causal approach.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- Mediation analysis in longitudinal study with high-dimensional methylation mediators.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Mediation analysis using incomplete information from publicly available data sources.Statistics in medicine · 2024Article
- Safety planning intervention and follow-up: A telehealth service model for suicidal individuals in emergency department settings: Study design and protocol.Contemporary clinical trials · 2024Article
1 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Mediation analysis is a valuable approach to examine pathways in epidemiological research. Prospective cohort studies are often conducted to study biological mechanisms and often collect longitudinal measurements on each participant. Mediation formulae for longitudinal data have been developed. Here, we formalize the natural direct and indirect effects using a causal framework with potential outcomes that allows for an interaction between the exposure and the mediator. To allow different types of longitudinal measures of the mediator and outcome, we assume two generalized mixed-effects models for both the mediator and the outcome. The model for the mediator has subject-specific random intercepts and random exposure slopes for each cluster, and the outcome model has random intercepts and random slopes for the exposure, the mediator, and their interaction. We also expand our approach to settings with multiple mediators and derive the mediated effects, jointly through all mediators. Our method requires the absence of time-varying confounding with respect to the exposure and the mediator. This assumption is achieved in settings with exogenous exposure and mediator, especially when exposure and mediator are not affected by variables measured at earlier time points. We apply the methodology to data from the Normative Aging Study and estimate the direct and indirect effects, via DNA methylation, of air pollution, and temperature on intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) protein levels. Our results suggest that air pollution and temperature have a direct effect on ICAM-1 protein levels (i.e. not through a change in ICAM-1 DNA methylation) and that temperature has an indirect effect via a change in ICAM-1 DNA methylation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.